Qualifications

Hi Lynn/Natalie

Below you will see a button which ought to fire up an email to me crammed with information about your browser set-up. It might ask for your confirmation before it does this - please say yes. Don't forget to SEND that email, so I get it

We have just made a new version of the interface for comparing qualifications in the UK and Ireland (Qualifications can cross boundaries - a rough guide to comparing qualifications in the UK and Ireland). This version has been stripped-down so that it is more suitable for linking to from other contexts (for instance from the qualifications organisations' sites).

We have bought a new internet domain to host the interface (qualifications-across-boundaries.org). At the moment, the UK and Ireland interface is the only real content in the new domain, but in the near future we may be developing new content in other areas of the new site (for instance, links or comparisons related to the EQF).

Changes of note in the new interface are:

• The 'banner' is now site-neutral and takes up much less space.
• The introductory text has been shortened ( with a link to show / hide further introductory text)
• The options for controlling the appearance and display are now, by default, hidden (click the light-switches icon at the top right of the interface to show/hide these

These changes mean that more of the "meat" of the interface is now visible without scrolling. We'll also be looking at ways of reducing the requirement for vertical scrolling when clicking for the information about particular qualifications and levels (check again later today for this improvement).

I've just posted version 6 beta of Qualifications can cross boundaries - a rough guide to comparing qualifications in the UK and Ireland.

Changes in this version:

• Improvement to the controls for choosing to hide some columns, and/or hide the instructions. There is now a series of checkboxes to control this, which makes it look cleaner and also gives better feedback to the user.
• You can now choose an alternative, plain, styling instead of the leaflet appearance. There is a select-box (drop-down menu) to the right of the checkboxes mentioned above.

There is still room to add to these improvements. I can augment or change the palin stylesheet, and can easily create yet more alternative stylings ( the 'accessible semantic markup' of the table makes this very easy ). The user interface for controlling which columns are shown could be augmented with some ready-made pairwise choices (compare scotland with ireland for instance). And of course there is still a bit of work to be done with the rest of the interface,

Please give us feedback on what you think. Just add comment to this weblog entry, or email Alan with your comments.

I have just posted version 4 beta of Qualifications can cross boundaries - a rough guide to comparing qualifications in the UK and Ireland.

What's new in this version?

This version incorporates all the textual changes requested to date

What's still TO-DO?

The next version will have a more complete "fit and finish" and will address some requests about the user interface:

• the interface for choosing which columns to view will be much-improved
• options for choosing alternative look and feel will be provided (for instance a light background)
• the overall links to the national bodies will be updated and the link-labels shortened
• the overall completeness of the interface elements and behaviours will be improved (for instance trying to place the more-information viewing-box within the visible screen area regardless of screensize and scrolling position).

When's the next version going to be posted?

I'll be posting interim tests for the next version starting midweek next week ( around the 26th of May)

This new version of the "Qualifications can cross boundaries" leaflet has been greatly enhanced, with draft explanations of each qualification, level and framework. Please check the content for your own framework - you may also want to make comparisons of how content is handled in the other frameworks. Note a lot of intensive semantic-html work has been carried out by KnowNet to portray text in a way that aids meaning. When everyone is happy with the content we will link to it directly from a new portal:

This leaflet helps you explore these questions.

Click on any of the qualifications or levels in the table below to view more information about it. (Click again to hide the information box, or click the close icon in the info-box toolbar).

Click the 'Hide' buttons to put away columns you re not interested in ( a new link will appear near the top of the page for showing that column again).

Notes:

• we will need some additional content with regard to some Irish qualifications 
• the integration of the new Scottish qualifications that range across a number of levels poses a particular challenge.
• you may wish to consider whether we should give more examples of qualifications at particular levels.

The problem Alan noted with the QualsCrossBoundaries interface has been fixed...

By the way, it's not just that there were 3 rows of content in scottish level 8... web content has to 'flow' in order to be accessible to the visually impaired; so for instance the QualsCrossBoundaries interface tries to be fairly robust against the user massively increasing the text size ( unlike the pdf file, the text has to be able to be made bigger without blowing up the entire layout )

I've tried the changed interface with pretty big user-increased text and it still has the irish 7 halfway between scottish 8 and 9 :o)

can everyone let me know if this looks OK - especially if there are other problems to see to.

PS - As soon as we get a chance, we have ideas for a much more powerful / adaptable format which we'd like to base further work on...

The advantage of posting proposed entries for individual boxes here is that we will be able to see what others are doing and how the developments are shaping as a whole.

It will also be possible to link to content on your own sites or elsewhere: see the four links at the top right above this entry.

One question I have concerns the insert in the hard copy of the Irish version of the leaflet: will that content be covered in the individual entries or would it be useful to have some general accompanying text like that - it could be placed alongside the rough guide in some way.

What do others think?

I have just posted a first alpha-version to illustrate some of the features that an interactive, online interpretation of the Qualifications can cross boundaries information could have. To view the mock-up, go to Qualifications can cross boundaries - interactive version alpha v1.

When you are looking at the new mockup, you can click on links/buttons to hide and show the instructions and/or the individual columns of the information table. I am aware that repeated clicking to hide/show causes some glitchy behaviour. I'll be re-writing the dynamic interface to avoid those glitches and also to provide more powerful choices for how the user wants to view the comparative information.

Please let us know what you think, either by leaving a comment on this weblog entry or by posting a new weblog entry with your comments. It is easy to do either; if you register as a member of the site you can do both (if you do not want to join the site, you can still leave a comment on this entry by going to its 'permalink', scrolling down to the quick-reply form, and using the anonymous comment option. If you are logged into the site, you can post a weblog entry directly from the mock-up crossing boundaries interface by clicking the icon.

For some time now, thanks to Alan Brown's astute intervention, we here at KnowNet have been exploring options for a dynamic, online version of the information presented in the leaflet(s) "Qualifications can cross boundaries - a rough guide to comparing qualifications in the UK and Ireland". That work is still preliminary, but I'll be posting at least one option later this morning.

To provide some background, I attach the PDF leaflets of the crossing boundaries information for Scotland, Ireland, and England, Wales & Northern Ireland (the difference between the leaflets is in the order of the information columns and in the contact details provided).

Watch this weblog for further posts about the crossing boundaries interfaces.

By the way, I am posting the entry from ECTO - my favourite weblog-editing desktop application. It is easy to post weblog entries from within the weblog itself, but you may find that it is even easier to post from special desktop applications like ECTO - for instance it allows multiple file attachments / thumbnails in one step.

A key advantage of rich RSS for collaboration spaces is that it allows people to track a large number of discussions, distributed across disparate systems. With the advent of podcasting and filecasting, this is even easier. If you subscribe to the RSS 2 feed for this weblog, you'll see that when there is a file attached to a post, you have access to it directly from your feed reader, without having to visit the site.

The advantage of this system over having to remember to re-visit all the websites you area member of is obvious

It advantage over emailing files to everyone who may want them is that the user "pulls" instead of being "pushed at". Instead of unwelcome emails disturbing my concentration - and being quickly forgotten as they are pushed down my inbox by yet more emails, I track projects and discussions through RSS when I choose to. And my organisation of feeds serves as a memory for the content I've been tracking.

And since our discussions also support the 'editing APIs', you can also post and attach directly from a weblog editor. No-one need ever even visit the site! For instance, I attached the pdf file above just by dragging it into my editing pane in ecto.